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Tuesday, July 16, 2013

re-revamped vanity: I redid it last summer, but it seems some of my work was not of the greatest quality, plus some other reasons to be discussed further

sanding and staining a lot of furniture

learning guitar!

I have to sand and paint a ton of furniture so that all of our furniture matches when my husband and I are married...that's right, I'm engaged to be married to the man of my dreams!! I am sooooo excited! I'm a little less excited about that the tedious project of staining 2 nightstands, a dresser, a vanity, and potentially a set or two of shelves. Yipes! The good thing is that I have many many months to take are of it.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

So while I would have LOVED to make it as gaudy and vibrant as rhinestoningly possible, but I figured since I was going to have this mirror for the next decade or so, I should make it a little more classy and versatile.

Prep, Prime, and Paint the Surface

First I covered the actual glass mirror part of the contraption with painters tape- because what is the point of a mirror if it is covered in paint? The mirror I used was a textured plastic which meant it needed to be primed before any kind of paint would stick to it. It was also black, and I wanted it to be a light, sheer shimmer, so that meant I would need to make sure no black was going to show through the pearly champagne color I wanted. I used the RustOleum flat white primer from Home Depot, I can only find the grey one online, but they had white at the store. After two coats of that on each side of the mirror, I put just one even coat of RustOleum Gloss paint in Almond on both sides. I waited about 20-45 mins between each coat of paint, then came the shimmer! I covered the mirror in mutliple coats of Martha Stewart's Metallic acrylic paint in Light Gold, which I got at Michaels Craft Store (their iPhone app has AMAZING coupons), Mother of Pearl was another pretty option. Since this paint was much thicker than the spray paint, I left about an hour to an hour and a half between each coat. I let that dry for at least 4 hours before taking the next step....

Make a Stencil

After clicking through hundreds of barbie silhouettes I finally settled on this one. Then I printed it out, taped it to a post card (and I mean covered it in take- like laminated) and used a razor blade (an X-acto knife would be safer) to cut out the silhouette, creating a stencil. Then I tapes the stencil onto the mirror, making it fit as closely to the surface as possible- no room for the paint to drip under the cracks. Then just paint and let it dry at least an hour before removing stencil. Peel the stencil and tape off SLOWLY, if it comes off in a clean line, take it off, but if it looks like the paint is stretching as you peel, STOP and wait another 30 mins or so.

Glitterize

For Barbie's glitterized ponytail-holder, I mixed Mod Podge and Bubble Gum pink glitter together, in nearly equal portions. Then just painted the little sliver of space, and let it dry. I think I put about 2 coats of glitter-paint on, waiting 20ish minutes in between..

Ta-dah! Glitter makes everything better :) More happiness is on the way! Just you wait....'enry 'iggins, just you wait!

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaappy April! Did you get pranked yesterday? Hopefully not, because its usually not fun to be on the other end of the prank.

I'm just plain excited about life this week. I want to create, and build, and craft, and love, and give, and smile and just be HAPPY! I have a whole list of crafts that I am dying to get to, but am low on the crafting money right now, so until then:

Here's what I made last week:

Last Wednesday was my dad's birthday; as I have mentioned before, he is not here to celebrate with us, but we wanted to celebrate his amazing life anyway! One of my most favorite things in this world is to give gifts. I always put a lot of thought into gifts because I want to get the person something they're going to love and use for a long time. Since I couldn't actually give the birthday boy a gift, I made gifts for the whole family. Everyone got a goody bag of all my dad's favorites: his 2nd favorite chocolate because I couldn't find the first, the only non-chocolate candy he would ever eat (red Starburst, only red), and his favorite music. I put together a playlist of some of his favorite songs, mostly 70s rock with a few country hits in there. I then used a program at work called Bravo Disc Publisher to print the CD face.

I was just so excited to give this to all of them, and was beyond ecstatic when they (especially my mom) reacted the way they did! Ahhhhh so awesome!

Crafts to come:

Trunk case/bench

Barbie handheld mirror

I can't wait!!!

In case you didn't get my Grey's Anatomy reference in the title of today's post:

Bright and Shiny is how I feel this week, so I leave you with this note:

When you get up in the morning, think about what you can give away today: a smile, some love, some time, advice, clothes you don't wear anymore? Just give something away! We were all given some amazing gifts when we landed here on this planet, and its our job to share those with the people we meet....so go ahead, give something great away to someone that needs their heart lifted :)

Oh and on a very important note: New Girl is on on Thursday this week, not Tuesday!!

Sunday, March 17, 2013

What better way to celebrate St.Patrick's day than to go to Emerald City?!? I went to see Oz the Great and Powerful with my sister today, and it was AMAZING. We saw it in IMAX 3D which I am normally quite disappointed by, but it was pretty awesome this time. I loved everything about this movie; the creators did an amazing job of materializing a new Oz. It was SO colorful and just fantastical. The music was perfect, the makeup was of course enamoring, and the costumes mesmerizing. I love love loved it and want to see it again.

So, of course, I was all Ozzed out with my Glinda eye shadow And earlier this week, I got this little baby in the mail: OPI's When Monkeys Fly. It's this beautiful glitter topcoat with various sizes of iridescent glitter, and large gold flecks. It is my new favorite color, and I'll likely be wearing it every week until the bottle runs dry. And then I'll have to pay twice the price to buy a bottle off of Amazon because I never want to be without this color. I wish I had a bottle of glitter just like it (minus the polish). That way I could throw it at someone when I got mad at them (the glitter, not the bottle). Because let's face it, glitter makes everything better :)

But none of this was the most exciting part of the week. Last night some friends of mine premiered the first part of the Songstream Project. They have spent months compiling audio from interviews with some amazing young people and their families to see how music has transformed their lives that are each affected by autism. I was just so humbled by the work they are doing, it really made me appreciate all that I have learned through my major of communication. Through out my academic career in this major, the recurring lesson I have learned is that everyone NEEDS love. They need connection. They need affection. They need friendship. They need family. They need a way to express these things, and for these things to be expressed towards them. The catch is that each individual interprets and experiences love in a different way. As Michael (one of the members of the Songstream team) said last night it is our job as human beings to "adapt our approach." It is a necessity for us to observe others, and figure out what it is they need to feel loved, to feel heard, to just feel and to then give them that. Without this, we become isolated. I believe it was in one of my health communication classes that we discussed the age old phrase, "treat others how you want to be treated." As we explored this ideal, we concluded that it is more beneficial to live by the notion of treating others how THEY want to be treated. This was not the point of last nights show, Voices of Autism, but it is what I took away from it. Please check out their website, and listen to the show which can be streamed here. It really was such a great experience, if you are in the area for their next show, PLEASE PLEASE check it out. Ah, I just love them.

On another note: why is March so awesome? Not only is it my birthday month, but it is also Barbie's birthday month! I never knew!! I think a Barbie craft is in order for celebrating....I will just say "coming soon," and leave it at that. Hoping it materializes before the month is over. Last Thursday I watched this gem without knowing that her birthday just a few days away (the doll was first launched on March 9th, 1959). I owned the VHS of that, and I'm pretty sure I wore out the tape :)

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

I've always loved that song...and today sure felt like a Monday. Crazy crazy crazy.
After a long weekend of being sick, it was my brother's birthday, so we went out on Sunday and then had family dinner on Monday. Here's one stop we made on Sunday- Dulce de Leche cheesecake at Extraordinary Desserts in Little Italy YUM! They make the most beautiful desserts, and so so tasty.

These are my awesome new matte-purple sunglasses from Target and they paired SO well with red lipstick!

And then we had some delicious sun the past two days, so I finally got to wear a dress!
Here's the look of the day as requested by my friend:
Target dress, Madden Girl sandals, Forever 21 earrings, and a belt that came with a pair of Target jeans.

I'm in a creative rut this week. I don't know what to make next!!! I'm thinking something for my room. Something in the furniture arena. Maybe a trunk/chest for the foot of my bed. If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments below :)

Friday, March 8, 2013

Worked from home today- had at least four cups of tea and soup because I am sick. Being sick is quite annoying.

But I had my trusty side-kick to keep me company.

Check out the super cute unicorn piggy bank I found at Target yesterday! It seems I am moving out of my Alice in Wonderland phase and into a whole new fairy tale...I am going to contemplate buying it, but I doubt I'll ever use it. And yes, I did find it in the little girls' section :)

My creative goal for the day was to create the illusion that I am not sick. In other words, pack on the makeup. Luckily, I received the awesome Urban Decay Oz the Great and Powerful palettes for my birthday (which was last Saturday). By the grace of God and some makeup willpower, my mom and sister were able to get me one of each- I thought that would be near impossible since these little guys usually get snatched up so quickly! Here is the final look:

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Oooookay, so I will be the first to admit, this was not my most proud crafting moment. I sometimes get so excited about using adhesives that I forget to map out a blueprint prior to my glittering and gluing. I am happy with the way it turned out, I just need to look at it as a whole, rather than each little detail.

Without further ado, here is the bedazzled table-top mirror:

Above: the before picture. I was trying to take a picture of how many mirrors I had on my vanity at once....it is the circular stand-up one with the light around it. I'm not sure the exact model number, but I believe it is Conair. I got it as a gift from my brother and his wifey- I'm pretty sure it is from the holy grail of warehouses, Costco.

I knew that the jewels I had were too thick (the largest was about the size of a gold dollar coin) to just be stuck on the handle as is, so I started by layering stripes of hot glue all along the handle until it was as wide as the largest jewel (like in the next picture).

The above picture is kind of hard to see, but I have the mirror laying parallel to the floor so you can see that there is still some space between the jewel and the new handle.

To to fix that, I just filled up that space with hot glue, but be careful not to make it overflow! To stick on the rest of the jewels, just put a little pea sized amount of hot glue on the back of each jewel, and press it onto the new glue-handle. I used a bunch of different shaped jewels, so I had to work each piece in like a jigsaw puzzle to make sure there wasn't too much of the glue-handle showing. And Ta-da! A new bedazzled mirror...and my floating head in the bedazzled mirror.